Investigators

DOI

10.3334/CDIAC/cli.100

Period of Record

1881 - 2010 (depending on station)

Background

Over the past several decades, many climate datasets have been exchanged directly between the principal climate data centers of the United States (NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)) and the former-USSR/Russia (All-Russian Research Institute for Hydrometeorological Information-World Data Center (RIHMI-WDC)). This data exchange has its roots in a bilateral initiative known as the Agreement on Protection of the Environment (Tatusko 1990). CDIAC has partnered with NCDC and RIHMI-WDC since the early 1990s to help make former-USSR climate datasets available to the public.

The first former-USSR daily temperature and precipitation dataset released by CDIAC was initially created within the framework of the international cooperation between RIHMI-WDC and CDIAC and was published by CDIAC as NDP-040, consisting of data from 223 stations over the former USSR whose data were published in USSR Meteorological Monthly (Part 1: Daily Data). The database presented here consists of records from 518 Russian stations (excluding the former-USSR stations outside the Russian territory contained in NDP-040), for the most part extending through 2010. Records not extending through 2010 result from stations having closed or else their data were not published in Meteorological Monthly of CIS Stations (Part 1: Daily Data).

The database was created from the digital media of the State Data Holding. The station inventory was arrived at using (a) the list of Roshydromet stations that are included in the Global Climate Observation Network (this list was approved by the Head of Roshydromet on 25 March 2004) and (b) the list of Roshydromet benchmark meteorological stations prepared by V.I. Kodratyuk, Head of the Department at Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory.

Description of the Data and Metadata

This database contains four variables: daily mean, minimum, and maximum temperature, and daily total precipitation (liquid equivalent). Temperature were taken three times a day from 1881-1935, four times a day from 1936-65, and eight times a day since 1966. Daily mean temperature is defined as the average of all observations for each calendar day. Daily maximum/minimum temperatures are derived from maximum/minimum thermometer measurements. The Temperature section of the NDP-040 measurement description file applies to the 518-station dataset also.

Daily precipitation totals are also available (to the nearest tenth of a millimeter) for each station. Throughout the record, daily precipitation is defined as the total amount of precipitation recorded during a 24-h period, snowfall being converted to a liquid total by melting the snow in the gauge. From 1936 on, rain gauges were checked several times each day; the cumulative total of all observations during a calendar day was presumably used as the daily total. The Precipitation section of the NDP-040 measurement description file applies to the 518-station dataset also.

The daily temperature and precipitation values are contained in 518 station files in the Russia_stations directory with names of the form "XXXXX.txt", with "XXXXX" representing World Meteorological Organization (WMO) station numbers ranging from 20046 to 37663. There is also one large file (Russia_518_data.txt.gz) containing data for all 518 stations found here, which has been compressed with the gzip utility. Each record of a data file is 52 characters in length and contains data for one day. See more information in the data format file, which also contains important information on data quality flags included for each variable in the data files.

One may obtain metadata for each station, including WMO station number, station name, latitude, longitude, elevation above sea level (m), and starting year of the station's record from two files: a pdf station inventory file (latitude/longitude coordinates in degrees and minutes) and a comma-separated value (.csv) file, suitable for reading by programs one may use in data analysis (latitude/longitude in decimal degrees; does not contain a comments field - available for some stations - as seen in the pdf file).

References

Tatusko, R. L. 1990. Cooperation in climate research: An evaluation of the activities conducted under the US-USSR agreement for environmental protection since 1974. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Washington, D.C.